I am haunted and I am ruined. This I know.
In weary days beneath a sunlit sky I toil against a world that hates my breath and footsteps. You do not belong here, the world tells me, and I must agree, but I cannot escape it. The world will suffer me, I insist, for we are all of us bound in suffering.
There is a cruel kind of inertia to the act of living. Our breath keeps us breathing, and our footsteps keep us walking. We eat so we may toil so we may eat so we may toil till food and toil run out. It must be madness to live the same day over and over, but we’re all mad here, only some of us don’t know it.
I know what I am. I embrace it. I toil and I suffer and I do not break, because in my dreams I see the Labyrinth and in the Labyrinth I see symbols.
My obsession does not start small. I fill the page of every notebook in my room with scribbled sketches and I cover the walls with paper and ink. When I run out, I buy more, and when my hours are cut and my budget shrinks I give up meals before I give up my opus.
Supplies, reagents, a formula, a circle. Words whispered and meaning sought, but nothing stirs. I fail. I begin again.
They say that repetition is a form of madness, but repetition with changing variables is the soul of modern science.
As I delve deeper into my task, my relationships all wither on the vine. I cloister in my chambers, speaking to no one but myself and the stuffed animals on my bed. Texts and calls go unanswered. Let them call it depression and lament my isolation. No one wants to reach out to a girl like that, and that’s all the better for my needs. I leave only to toil as I must and acquire more supplies.
“Do you remember the library, Cheshire?” I ask the stuffed cat sitting on my bed as it overlooks the ritual circle. “Where the hunters tracked us down, and where we fought that wizard,” I remind the cat as I draw a new set of signs and symbols. “So many books to sift through, but we found it! We found the one I needed, and we burned it into my soul and I remember what was in it. Every night, Cheshire. Every night, I remember. Even now, I see it clearly in my mind.”
I complete the circle and arrange my materials. I chant the words and grasp at meaning. I visualize the spell in my mind, the matrix of interlocking parts, the ignition trigger. I pull the trigger and nothing happens. The spell fails, like it has every time before. I start again.
It’s said that repetition is a kind of madness, but repetition with measured variables is the essence of a good experiment.
Hunger becomes a double-edged sword. It saps my energy, leaves me listless and struggling to focus, but it makes the right resonance for what I’m attempting. I eat only as much as I need to, and less on nights of major experiments. Let the hunger come, and I will greet it with open arms if it delivers me from my prison. Sometimes I overeat to add another variable, because every variable could be the one that solves the puzzle. Those are the nights that bring harder tomorrows as my stomach rebels against a brief taste of satiety before starvation returns.
My roommate grows concerned for me, but I loathe his pity. His kindness disgusts me and fills me with bile. Let me rot, I snarl at him. But when the hunger gets too sharp I still give in to his offer of a meal, because beneath it all I am still weak.
I arrange the signs and symbols in new configurations and old ones, trying everything thrice. “My memory is poor,” I confide in the plushie that isn’t my Cheshire, “which makes it all the stranger that I can remember those pages so clearly. It must be magic! We sealed it in a vault of memory and I can still see it where we left it, so it must have been real. These symbols must be real. So all I have to do is get the matrix right and tap into the right meaning, and it’ll work. It has to work.”
The spell doesn’t work. I call it out until my voice crumbles, but still it doesn’t work.
If repetition is an act of madness, then is experimentation just applied insanity? What worth is observation if it won’t give me the answers I need? What am I doing wrong?
Unemployment and food stamps aren’t quite enough to cover everything I need, so I sell everything I can: old books, my card collection, and then even my computer. I won’t need it in the Labyrinth, after all, and I don’t have time for web browsing or video games anymore. I need to finish my work. I need my magic back.
“I’ve been too weak,” I babble to the cat. “Coward! Yes, I am a coward! I was afraid, and that made me weak, and weakness made me stupid. Too many variables left unchanged. Too many pieces unconsidered.”
I draw and redraw the signs in my notebook, getting them perfect, and then I switch tools. I have to get this right with the implement I’ll be using, after all, or I know I’ll make a mistake and the spell will fail like it always does, but not this time. This time is different, I know it.
“I figured it out, Cheshire. You would laugh at me, wouldn’t you? And then you’d curl up beside me and you’d purr and I would splinter your lovely fingers for abandoning me and betraying me you lying—”
I breathe heavy, fingers shaking. Can’t shake now, not tonight. This is the one, I know it. Cool breath, easy breath, just keep breathing, nice and deep for me.
I run a hand through my unkempt hair and laugh out the nervous energy. “But it’s fine. I forgive you. I’ll forgive you, when I see you, when I show you what I’ve done. Because it’s going to work. I figured it out: I was using the wrong medium this whole time.”
Deep breath. Steady hand. I make the first cut.
“See, this magic system, the symbols, they don’t do anything when they’re just on paper,” I chatter as I carve the first rune into the flesh of my arm. It doesn’t hurt. “This language might be an operating system, but there’s no operator without a soul. Do you think paper has a soul, Cheshire? I don’t think it does. But I have a soul. I know I do, because I see the Labyrinth and the pages and the symbols every single night.”
I cut the next sign, and the next, painting the spell on my skin with a scalpel. “My mind’s eye isn’t good enough to hold that complex an image, even with the formula written out in front of me. And the drawings, well, they never meant anything, right? Paper doesn’t care. The floor doesn’t care. So it doesn’t matter how much resonance I flood the room with, it doesn’t matter the words I chant, because I’m missing the medium. But not tonight.”
The final diagram is a gorgeous sight. My body has never looked as beautiful as it does now, the symbols of my spell tracing from just before left wrist to just before left elbow. Still safe, even now, of course. I can’t cast the spell if I can’t use my arm, right? Everything I’m doing is perfectly safe.
“Maybe I’ll keep this,” I murmur, “when I come back to you. Maybe I’ll add more. Do you think that’s a pretty look for a demon, Cheshire?”
The stuffed cat doesn’t answer. I don’t expect it to.
“First, let’s capture the image for our notes.” I pull out my phone—the last valuable belonging I haven’t sold, too useful to be rid of—and take photos of my arm from every angle. If this works, I want to be able to reproduce it perfectly.
If it works. And if I survive it working.
For all my frenzy and desperation, a single seed of doubt nests in my heart when I look at the symbol that forms the centerpiece for my skin-carved spell matrix: the mark of the Abyss. This is my spell, a demon’s spell, and the price it asks is high. If it works, if I finally grasp that spark of true magic, how much of my soul will it devour?
In Reska’s time, before Throne magic, even a touch of the Abyss was lethal for an ordinary human. What will it do to me, calling on the Abyss in a world that magic has never known? Success could bring greater consequence than failure, with a spell like this.
But I don’t care. This is my spell, and if anything will respond to my call it’s this. This is my best chance to have magic again, and that is the only thing that matters.
“Okay. Showtime. And… sorry about this, critter.”
Hamsters are fairly cheap, and you can get them from any local pet store. Rats tend to be cheaper, but I actually like rats. I could probably find a wild cat on the street with a bit of searching, but I’m obviously not going to kill a cat.
“Isn’t it weird how it feels worse to murder an animal than a person?” I ask Cheshire. “This thing has a lifespan measured in sneezes, and here I am feeling awkward about snuffing its candle. Shame I couldn’t get a human, but, y’know, kidnapping brings cops.”
I pull the hamster out of its cage, holding it gentle but firm in my left hand, and I start the ritual to end its life.
“I beseech the Abyss,” I chant, “and all its dead and dreaming gods. Hearken to me, worms of the deep. I call upon your gift, our inheritance, my birthright. I am still the demon you made me, no matter the face I wear or what pumps through my veins. You demand conflict, so I will feed you conflict. You demand predation, so I will feed you predation. This is my pledge, my sacrifice, and my plea. All I ask is that you answer.”
I look at the rodent one final time, and I start to squeeze, and I whisper the words:
“Feast or Famine.”
The mark of the Abyss turns black from red, and then that inky color spreads across every fresh cut on my arm and seeps into the older scars, beneath my skin, into the blood that flows within darkening veins. Elation and fear slam against each other as the animal in my hand shrivels to dust and bones in an instant and I am filled with glorious power and terrible pain as my soul is ripped from my body.
I am winning. I am dying. I am triumphant. I am doomed. It was real. All of it was real, and magic is real, and my magic is killing me.
My vision swims. My limbs prickle and go numb and I stumble and slump. I collapse against the floor, unable to reach my bed, as nausea and dizziness get sharper and sharper. The black of the Abyss travels further up my arm in spiderweb patterns, and then everything goes dark.
And in the dark I fall, and I fall, and I fall. I sink down through the floor, down through the earth, down to the bottom of the world and even deeper. I fall into the fever-warm dark, and darkness greets me and holds me like a child in the womb.
In the dark I open my eyes, and through shadow and night I see a graveyard of worms at the sump of the universe.
I stand on a pile of bone and rotting meat, a mass grave with no soil to hide the gore. It stretches to the horizon in every direction, an endless field of dead bodies slowly mulching. Ringing the charnel pit are the bodies of worms, vast and sinuous and intermingled, all made of death and pocked with violence. Giants, visible from great distance as if they were close enough to touch, just like the tower in the Labyrinth.
From above, through the infinite space of dark-on-dark, wisps of drowned light come down in gentle trickles and pouring waterfalls. I see glimpses of oscillating color, rainbow chaos, and I know at once that these are souls.
The souls find their way to the worms, pouring into open wounds and toothy mouths that line their corpse-flesh bodies. I see dead gods stir and flex, shudder, and collapse again.
Leviathans.
“Forgive my masters their silence,” speaks a calm and resonant voice. “They are still licking their wounds after being murdered.”
I jump and whirl at the sudden sound. A few feet behind me, a figure floats in the dark. It is gray-skinned and ethereal, a wasting thing in gossamer robes that drift apart into swirling black mist. Its smile is thin and lipless, and the upper half of its head quickly devolves into twitching tendrils of slimy gray flesh.
My heart is still pounding from my brush with death, so I take a nervous step back and try to calm my nerves. Gather information, then negotiate. The game is back on, so it’s time to play. We will have our magic. “Your masters?” I ask with a tilt of my head. “Does that make you a demon or a geist?”
The figure laughs softly like velvet over stone. “I have been called as such, but neither label truly suits me. I prefer to be thought of by my singular title: I am the Emissary.”
Emissary? Where have I… My eyes widen. “Oh. You’re one of the archons, like the Intercessor and the Adversary.” Which means I am in even more danger than I thought.
Their smile turns tight. “I would rather not keep such company, if you don’t mind.”
A spike of fear makes me blurt, “Right, sorry, yeah. Emissary, then.” I blink away the panic and try to compose myself. “Ahem. I assume we’re having this conversation because of the spell I cast?” I raise my left arm, which looks dramatically different from how it looked a moment ago: the skin is largely unblemished, all markings vanished, except for the black symbol of the Abyss pulsating with an irregular rhythm.
The Emissary drifts around me, long fingers steepled together as they reply, “Indeed, your spellcraft was quite the impressive trick. If you wanted to attract our attention, you certainly succeeded. Please, tell me: did you know before you cast the spell that direct contact with the Abyss is lethal for an ordinary human?”
I hesitate before answering. “Well, partly. I wasn’t certain if I’d be protected or not. I was hoping I wouldn’t count as an ordinary human.”
The Emissary laughs again. “Extraordinary indeed, Maven Alice. The girl who sought the highest throne. The girl wished away. Yet you were still unprepared for the power you sought to wield. Though, before you worry, you aren’t dead. Just… visiting. An invited guest.”
Well, that’s a relief. A bit of tension eases from my shoulders, though I’m still on guard as I watch the strange god-thing circle me. They know too much about me, like everyone in power seems to. “Whose invitation, then?”
“Mine, of course. And theirs.” The Emissary stops in their original position and gestures to the distant worms. “The Leviathans are always willing to entreat with a worthy petitioner. You have called to them, the fallen masters of the Abyss, and they have answered. You seek its power, do you not?”
Hunger burns away my fear. “Yes. I need it.” I don’t care if I sound desperate, I won’t let this moment slip away. “I want magic again. I want power again.”
That lipless smile returns. “We are happy to negotiate such terms. But, when you have that power, what do you seek to do with it? Will you reign over that little blue dot?”
Harsh laughter claws its way out of my chest and I nearly double over. “That wretched hole? No, not a chance. I hate that world. I want power so I can leave. I’m going back to the Labyrinth, and I’m going to conquer it and make it mine. That’s the real prize.”
“I see. Then, perhaps we can come to an arrangement.” The Emissary drifts back a few feet and spreads its arms. “The magic you crave can be yours again, but why settle for what you had before? You have lapped at the Abyss through a water filter, never tasting the true and unalloyed article. I would offer you the gifts of the Leviathans, the strength of the deep dark.”
“And what would you ask in return?” I’m not so foolish as to believe these nightmare overlords would just give me magic for free. I don’t trust the Demiurge, but I don’t trust her enemies either.
“The Leviathans ask only for what you have already fed them: the souls of your prey.”
My gaze flicks to the soul fragments streaming down from above, then to the shuddering worms, and the pieces click into place. “The inheritance. Shadow magic. They call it a gift, but it’s really a contract, isn’t it? Abyss magic doesn’t just turn souls into energy, it feeds those souls to the Leviathans.”
Is that the true purpose of mass harvest events? Is that why the ninth archdemon will be the Endbringer? The wizard from the library said that the “prince of the apocalypse” would bring about the Resurrection, the revival of all Leviathans from their graves in the Abyss. But she also mentioned the Adversary, and the Emissary doesn’t seem on good terms with that archon, so what’s the full story?
Carefully, I say aloud, “I’ve heard it told that the ninth demon to ascend as Royalty will be the catalyst for the end of days: the Resurrection. Is that your aim?”
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The Emissary bows low. “As my masters will it. And, if you so choose, you may have a place in that great transformation. The Abyss will celebrate she who brings the end, and we shall crown her with many crowns. Perhaps, if you prove truly worthy, you may even claim the Throne Below.”
The Emissary drifts to one side and gestures with both hands at a throne of solid night that wasn’t there a second ago. I see bone and metal and screaming souls, a living and writhing thing that emanates power most of all. I see the promise of absolute rule over absolutely everything, the total usurpation of the Lucid Demiurge and her design.
It frightens me. It makes me hungry.
“Why?” is all I ask.
The Emissary understands my meaning. “We have long believed the Demiurge to be… unfit for her dominion. She did not earn her throne, but was given it by the Heretic. Were an enterprising soul to tear her from that throne, they would quite logically be a fitting successor. And that is your goal, is it not? To seize the reins of Pandaemonium?”
They’re telling me what I want to hear, which means I don’t trust a word of it. I don’t trust anyone. But I need the power I’m being offered. “What are your terms, Emissary? What are you actually asking of me, and what do I get out of it?”
“I can answer that, and will. But there is one question that must be settled first. You spoke of returning to the Labyrinth, but that is no easy feat. Do you have a plan, or just ambition?”
Ha! I actually have an answer to that one. I straighten up and lick my lips. “Oh, I have a plan. See, none of my things came with me when I was banished. Not my sword, not my outfit, none of it. Which means that somewhere out there, back in the Labyrinth where it was left, is a locket that holds a piece of my soul. All I have to do is unite the fractured whole.”
The Emissary’s flesh tendrils twitch, and the edges of its mouth quirk. “And do you know how to unite your pieces?”
My confidence deflates. “Well, no, but I can figure that out once I have magic.”
“I have no doubt. But I’m afraid there is an obstacle of which you seem unaware: the Labyrinth’s inviolate barrier. Even once you learn the necessary spellcraft to travel between worlds, only an archon is capable of moving objects across that veil.” The Emissary’s hands steeple together again as it says, “Like myself.”
I narrow my eyes. “You want something more than a tithe, then, in exchange for your help crossing the barrier.”
The Emissary raises a hand and few glimmers of rainbow soulstuff float down to orbit their fingers. “I offer a bargain in two parts. First, I will grant you the gifts necessary to wield the raw energies of the Abyss and cast your favored spells, and in return you will sate the Abyss with a tithe of souls. You will know this tithe by a hunger that stirs you to action, and the tithe shall be proportional to the power you call upon. You are already familiar with this kind of contract, as it forms the basis for the Abyssal powers you have tasted in your journeys. If you fail to feed upon the souls of others in sufficient quantity, your own shall pay the price. But as you learn to manipulate mana and life essence with more precision, needing less of our Abyssal backing to cast your routine spells, you will find the tithe to relax in proportion.”
“An eminently reasonable arrangement,” I comment dryly. “And the second, less reasonable part of this bargain?”
That wicked, lipless smile stretches. Its other hand raises, and a facsimile of Earth appears above it. “Deliver to me that little blue dot, and I shall ferry you across the veil between that world and the Labyrinth.”
For a second, I almost can’t believe what I heard. “You want me to give you Earth? That’s insane.” Seven billion people, sacrificed to the Abyss? Am I even capable of that? I can’t be that far gone. “And, hey, isn’t that against the Edicts? That definitely counts as interference with the Zero Sphere.”
The Emissary tilts their head. “Zero Sphere? Oh, my dear, it would seem you’ve been laboring under a quite incorrect assumption. That world is not the Earth of the Zero Sphere, but merely a world of Firmament crafted in its image. How else could you have cast a spell within its bounds?”
Not the real Earth. Not the Zero Sphere.
First is shock and disbelief. That could be a lie, the Emissary playing on my biases. Months of suffering for a cheap trick? That whole world, just a fiction? A twisted facsimile? Magic, just out of reach, because it wasn’t an isolated Sphere at all?
But it makes sense. It’s exactly the kind of senseless cruelty I would expect from the Lucid Demiurge, warping Dante’s wish to twist the knife even further on my suffering. Months of pain and labor that I know she’s laughing at. My whole existence is one big joke to her, isn’t it?
I hate her. I hate that arrogant bitch. I want to pull her down from the heavens so I can tear off her wings and pluck her eyes and make her beg me for death. I want to lock her in a cage and fill it with acid for a thousand years. I want to make her bleed. I hate the Demiurge.
But do I hate her enough to murder seven billion people?
That’s a cold splash of reality. The Emissary is asking for an entire planet, a whole world of people who, for all their faults, don’t deserve to be fed to malevolent worm gods. That’s a monstrous act, far worse than betraying one irritating hero. Far worse than whatever my relationship with Cheshire was. Far worse than planning to murder my way to ascension, worse even than the mass harvest that was our backup plan if a string of killings wasn’t enough.
But, if it’s a facsimile world, maybe the inhabitants are too? It could be a planet of figments, built just for me, and figments don’t feel pain. No, I can’t entertain that idea. If I’m going to do this, I have to treat the people of that world like they’re real, even if they aren’t, because to do otherwise would be moral cowardice.
There’s another angle, too: could seven billion souls be enough to kickstart the end of the universe? The promised apocalypse, the Resurrection, is all about the return of the Leviathans, and now I’ve seen one way they’re trying to return: feeding on souls until their forms regenerate. I have to imagine they’ve eaten more than that number in the thousands of years since their defeat, but all at once? Even Malice’s harvest event was only a fraction of that death toll, and she’s talked about in terrified whispers.
Here’s a no-longer-hypothetical question: how many people am I willing to kill to become God of all Creation? To steal the seat of the Demiurge and become the exalted master of Pandaemonium, where do I draw the line past which any further murders become unacceptable? Does that line even exist?
When I was a lonely, angry, scared little girl, I told myself that I would sacrifice every human being on planet Earth to buy eternity. I didn’t know if I meant it, because it was never a realistic trade to make. But now it is. Now I really do have that choice, and I have to decide: seven billion souls, or my singular forever? Countless worlds beyond that and the teeming trillions that might inhabit them, or my own lust for power and control?
I think I know the answer, and it disgusts me.
When I am God, I will do better.
That’s the excuse I’ll cling to. That’s the justification I’ll wield. When I am lord of the universe and everything burns away, I’ll raise something better from the ashes. I’ll make a world where no one has to suffer like I have suffered. I’ll forge a universe that bends toward justice, not pain. A reality that gives everyone what they need and punishes those that would take more than their share.
So let one planet burn. Let them all burn. Let the worm gods rise and eat their fill, and when I take the highest throne I’ll send them back to their graves and fill the space they left behind with light and love and wonder.
And it will all be worth it.
“Deal.”
One year before the end of the world, I kill a man who had never raised a hand to harm me.
I kill him at night, as we pass each other beneath a streetlight. It happens quick, but I don’t know if it was painless. Something lives in my shadow now, and I think it might be me. We swallow him whole and his soul sustains us for a week. His life force heals my aches and pains. The essence of his being keeps us sated.
When the hunger returns, we kill again. And so it goes.
I know the thing in my shadow will turn on me if I ever let it starve, but I love it all the same. I trace my fingers across my skin and see runes shimmer black and violet before fading again to resting invisibility. This contract, the new tapestry of my form, I find beautiful.
The Emissary shows me symbols I never saw in my pilfered tome, the signs and spells of Malice and Wonder and all the rest. I learn how to be a demon properly, the old-fashioned way, and I nurture it with every murder. I conspire with my mentor to alter my physicality, and it’s not as easy as it was with Cheshire, but with every passing week I look a little more like me.
And every week I kill again.
Eleven months before the end of the world, I welcome a guest from the void.
Finding a space where I won’t be caught in the act is the hardest part, but then I realize I don’t need to worry about getting caught. I’ll simply change who I am.
I’m using someone else’s voice when I call the police from a burner phone, and I’m wearing another face when they find me in the empty house. The building belongs to someone who owns too many of them, a realtor who pays a pittance to keep it nice and clean in the hopes of a big sale. I’m sure they can afford to wash out the blood.
The first pair of pigs don’t see it coming when my shadow runs them through, but I let one live just long enough to radio the rest. Their backup comes in with guns at the ready, but my shadow is a versatile companion and their bullets find no purchase in my flesh.
I let the beast run wild, and when I’ve had my fill of pleasure I set about my work.
When the bodies are arranged as they need to be, their blood staining the walls and floor in arcane symbology, their limbs piled in a pyre, I speak the words and open the gate.
A monster steps through, a night horror from the depths of the Abyss, and it bows its eyeless head to me before feasting on the man I left alive and bound. This is the first of many. This is a proof of concept. This is a test, and I pass.
That night, the Emissary teaches me new symbols.
Nine months before the end of the world, I solve a new spell and cross a new line.
My shadow has been a faithful hound, but it does not complete me. I revel in violence of the body, but within my soul simmers the potential for violence of heart and mind. Why did I stray from that, when offered power? Why did I ever hesitate before the threshold of mastery?
I’m killing a world. It’s time to get serious.
In my last dream of the time before the Labyrinth, my last vision of Reska before I was expunged, I saw the princess cast a spell that has lingered in my mind for all the months since. In her confrontation with her own reflection, a smaller beast for a smaller labyrinth, Reska broke from torment and broke her tormentor. She brainwashed it.
Reska was horrified, but Homura was fascinated, and so am I.
The spell was a new expression of her power, a magical mutation. Her shadows, always eager to obey their master’s wants and needs, had lashed out before but never like that. It was only in alloying with her blood that her most horrifying spell was born. A symphony of perfect resonance stole the heart of something bent on her ruination. If I can understand those resonances, I can shape them with my art.
Shadow is easier, its meaning obvious and familiar. Shadow is the magic of the Abyss, a living bargain with dead gods. The foundation of every demon, its arcane essence is hunger, conflict, and predation. Shadow grants the ability to prey upon another, to sink one’s fangs into their form and draw forth their essence to devour.
Blood is more complicated. It can mean life, death, bonds, conflict, or sacrifice. Reska wanted it to mean healing, but she could only ever wield harm, and I think I understand why.
Surrounded by others in the heart of a kingdom that bore her name, Reska was nevertheless alone. Her affinity for Shadow kept her isolated, and she wanted more than anything for her new affinity to break that isolation and connect her with others. If she could heal through Blood, then she could share in the traditions of her bloodline. If she could nourish the kingdom through Blood, then she could share in her bloodline’s responsibilities. But a power born of isolation could never be the end of isolation.
And yet, in that terrible moment in the depths of her personal hell, I think Reska finally succeeded. Just not in a way she’d ever wanted.
Blood can be the bonds we share, but not all bonds are healthy or desirable. Connections can hurt us, and that hurt can travel through every connection that follows. A bond, when darkened and made violent, can spread sickness just like infection breeds in blood.
As a disease of the flesh incubates in the body and spreads through contact with its fluids, so too can a disease of the spirit incubate in the mind and spread through contact with its ideas. Hatred can be a plague. Misery can be a contagion.
Can I do the same with the sickness inside me? I know it must be possible, because the sickness of my mind is the same as that which afflicted Reska, the sickness that broke her:
Please love me. Please don’t leave me.
I can make that a virus. I can make that a spell.
And when I use it on someone with more money than sense or empathy, it’ll be a victimless crime. And I will never go hungry another night on this worthless world.
When I speak the words and see their free will vanish, I smile.
Six months before the end of the world, I take another hit and blow smoke in the face of a girl whose name I’m never going to remember.
Five, eight, some number of other girls sprawl around my latest den in various states of undress, all sucking face or getting drunk and high. They’re here for the sex and the drugs and the free food, none of them under my thrall. The thralls are the rich people serving us wine and bringing us more edibles and snacks whenever we ask.
There’s a movie on the big screen that I’m too intoxicated to pay attention to. Music is playing from somewhere, and it’s too loud, but that means I don’t have to listen to anyone talk. I can just lose myself in the ocean of noise and the feel of skin on skin as the next round of weed hits my brain and smooths everything over. It feels great.
We kiss, we laugh, we eat, we fuck. This might be what paradise tastes like, in soft flesh and wet lips, in a sensual array of parts and proclivities. The food is divine, the drugs are better, and everything is pleasure.
I’m going to burn it all. I’m going to burn this whole world, and everyone in it. I’m going to kill every girl in this room, and none of them will ever know it was me.
I grab another bottle and drink till I hit bottom.
Two months before the end of the world, I’m driven deep into farm country to find a town that no one will miss.
Of course, in the digital age, anywhere with cell coverage is just a few taps away from national news if they happen to film the right scene. It took a bit of work to figure out who exactly I needed to enthrall to cut all access to the area for a few hours, but I have time and resources aplenty these days.
The signal sends and blackout begins.
I don’t go into town. I don’t want to know who I’m killing. I work around the edges, my thralls laying all the ritual components I had prepared in the week prior. The sacrifices came with us, all of them willing thanks to my poison in their veins. They march to their doom with sparkling eyes and smiling faces.
Blood is spilled, words are incanted, and the sky turns black as the Abyss seeps in. Night horrors burst from the earth and lope toward their victims, and the air turns fever-warm. I start the timer, and a thrall brings me noise-canceling headphones so I won’t have to hear the screams. I read a book while I wait, something light.
Five minutes. Ten. An hour. Two hours. Still the black sky holds.
When the overlay finally collapses, true night has fallen. I write in my notebook:
Test successful. Degrade within expected parameters. Proceed to next phase.
On the drive back to the estate, I drink myself to sleep.
One week before the end of the world, I stare at my bathroom mirror and cry.
Three hours before the end of the world, I wake up hungover.
There are two girls in my bed, and I want to stay with them. They are warm and soft, and I will miss their touch. I will miss the nights we shared. I will miss the food we ate together. I will miss getting high and watching dreadful anime together, and I will miss the jokes and the insults and the flirting.
I cling to them tightly and for a moment I imagine that this is the whole world. No gods or monsters, just warm bodies intertwined. Endless days of laughter and good food, and endless nights of sex and bad movies. Wouldn’t that be nice?
What if, all this time, I was wrong?
If the universe is cold and uncaring, then why do I smile when I hold a woman’s hand? If we are all here just to suffer, then why does it feel so good to laugh? If I am cursed, then why can I still taste the spice in my ramen broth and all the fruits in my morning smoothie?
I will miss being human.
The realization is horrifying, but unmistakable. I will miss being human. I didn’t even know that was possible. It wouldn’t have been possible, if you’d asked the Alice of a year before. Was my life truly so empty?
But then, that’s the key, isn’t it? The emptiness I felt, it wasn’t going away. All the good memories I’ve made between acts of violence, they were only made possible by that violence. I pursue my pleasures with the money I’ve taken from the minds I’ve enslaved. The food and drink and drugs that I offer to the girls who come to my parties, none of it would exist without the blood I’ve spilled and the souls I’ve ruined.
I may feel human, but I’m not one. I can’t forget that no matter how much I drink.
The life I have now, the life I’m about to burn, it came at a price. All the power I was granted, all the tutelage I received, it was all for the purpose I’m about to fulfill. All for this moment, and for what follows.
I made a deal. And if I went back on it, I’d lose everything. Maybe, if I were clever, I could get away with my soul. But my days would not be endless.
Cheshire once told me, in one of those quiet nights as we lay awake, what happens to a demon if she betrays her nature. She told me it’s the only way to kill an archdemon, in theory, though it’s never been tried.
The nature of a demon is desire. A certain hunger takes root in that demon’s heart and curls up in her core. The more powerful she gets, the more refined her core, the more she must follow its tenets. If the archdemon Wonder forsook her curiosity for even a moment, then in that moment she would be as mortal as a human child.
I made a promise to myself, and I carved the words of that promise deep into the very essence of my being. I made it my animus.
I’ll risk it all: my power, my body, and my very soul. The ultimate risk, and the ultimate reward. I will overthrow the Demiurge and take her place on the Throne of Creation, or I will be taken by the hungering Abyss. There is no other path that will suffice, no lesser road that still leads to the usurpation of God herself. She who is not willing to give everything will be forever left with nothing.
The human Morgan might like to stay here forever in this bed, in this house, on this planet. But it wouldn’t be forever.
Only the demon Alice can have those endless days.
Ten minutes before the end of the world, I say my last goodbye.
I chose the Space Needle for the place I’d be standing when it all ended. I’ve always hated that landmark, so it seemed fitting. Even at the very end, I’m still afraid of heights.
My thralls have the building secured, and all the ritual sites throughout Seattle and the surrounding country. A hundred imitations in miniature together forming the aperture of the gate, and here the very center. I’ve been busy these past couple months, and the whole West Coast is saturated with Abyssal radiation from prototype overlaps. Now, in just a few more moments, I’ll say the right words and watch it all drown in shadow.
How do you say goodbye to a life?
I guess I’m not really saying it, if I stop and think. I didn’t say goodbye to my father, or to anyone who knew me. I could have. I had plenty of opportunity. But I was afraid.
I want to feel like a demon and a conqueror as I stand atop the world ready to drag it down to hell. But a conqueror doesn’t stare at the door to her father’s house, hand raised and trembling, before running away. I never said goodbye. I never said anything.
Sometimes it feels that the only thing I have ever known is regret.
I wonder who I could have been if my mom had lived a little longer. I wonder if my heart would have held so much hate if my father hadn’t put it there. I wonder how much of myself died before I ever knew it was alive.
I press my hand to the glass and close my eyes. For a moment, I imagine the glass shattering. I imagine falling down from this incredible height and breaking against the street below. I imagine a world without me in it.
I think that would be a better world. A safer, happier world.
But it’s not the one I choose.
I take a deep breath, clench my fist, and then release. I open my eyes. And I say to myself in quiet bitterness, “Go then, there are other worlds than these.”
I light the match and set this Earth on fire.
Far above, the sun is swallowed by endless darkness, and great tendrils of unliving flesh bear down upon the great towers and triumphs of human civilization. Horrors burst forth from every shadow and drink their fill of flesh and pain and terror. One planet, seven billion people, all offered to the dead and dreaming worms.
The Emissary rests a hand on my shoulder and smiles at me. “Wonderfully done, my student. As promised, the way back is yours.”
I turn from my teacher and walk through the portal without a word. Guilt and dread and relief all intermingle with nervous anticipation. I’m going back. I’m going home. And all it cost was a planet.
I stride the gap between worlds. I return to the Labyrinth.
And in the space between spaces, I see a woman with bright red eyes and the body of a doll, and she tilts her head at me as she says, “Oh dear. Well, this isn’t real at all, is it?”